Best Practices for Native Part Description

[Kenevil]

I've been researching all day and it appears that if I intend to start using versioning, the CAD file's title at the operating system level should not include a part description. I thought this would be fine if I could have a description attribute that could be viewable in windows explorer but that ability seems to have gone with NX6.

One post suggested a data coordinator would have a master list containing descriptions for each part. We don't have a data coordinator and even if we did, I couldn't imagine referencing a separate list to hunt down a file.

We use NX7.5 and NX8.0. Any suggestions?

 

[looslib]

How many seats of NX do you have?
A PLM system on top fo NX will do what you want, but it does have expenses and overhead to account for.
There are some other methods of maintaining a file log of file names, titles, revsions and other part details.



"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[Kenevil]

I wont get into all the reasons why we are not investing in a PLM system but we did take a long hard look at it and decided not to. Our company has reduced to about 20 NX seats right now. In the past, it's been over 150.

A BOM usually exists with every project that does contain numbers, descriptions, revisions, ect. I've been creating attributes for each field in NX.

An example of a typical file number is "K12345 12.34 1234-A Description". (project, system.subsystem, unique 4-diget number-rev, description). I think I would like to drop the description from the title and view it with a description field in windows explorer but I have been unsuccessful so far.

Then I thought I shouldn't reinvent the wheel and hear how Siemens intended native files to work but can't find much info.

 

[looslib]

To use part versioning rules you have to have a file name that can be 'divided' into 2 parts. The main partnumber and a revision. When I set up part versioning in UG2-V10, 20 years ago, our part numbers/file names were: 12546987.01.prt. This allowed us to use the 2 parts and get what we needed so part versioning would work.

You can use file properties to add descriptive values for the name to be displayed in Windows Explorer.

We used a GRIP program that would build a text file of part number, revision and descriptions taken from the UG/NX attributes.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[Kenevil]

Can the name format contain spaces?

With our current naming configuration, the first "-" separates the base number from the rev followed by a description. If NX is able to sort everything after the "-" alphabetically, I think I may be ok as long as it can handle spaces.

example - naming without description
partnumber-A.01
partnumber-A.02
partnumber-B

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=359965

still sorts alphabetically with description after the "-"
partnumber-A.01 Bracket - Engine LH
partnumber-A.02 Bracket - Engine LH
partnumber-B Bracket - Engine LH

 

[looslib]

That naming format would be very hard to use with part versioning.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[cowski]

At my last employer we had a strict rule of "no spaces allowed in file names"; not because of a limitation with the OS or NX, but because it caused problems with the scripts that the IT department used on a regular basis for file backups and other server maintenance. You may want to check with IT (you still have at least one of them around, I hope) before you start allowing spaces in file names.

Roughly how many files do you currently have to maintain? Do they all conform to this naming standard in your previous post? How much to you know about regular expressions?

If you have a lot of files that use the naming standard above, I think you can make it work. But as Ben alluded, it may be difficult to setup and maintain. If you are starting something new, you may want to look into what has already been done, perhaps use the military spec for part number/revisions or something similar. There was a thread a while back that may interest you: thread561-267103. Also, you may want to get a reference on engineering documentation control for a good idea of what to do / what not to do. I've read most of this one, and it seemed pretty good.

Also, file "tags" may be an option depending on the filesystem your workstations and server(s) use. You might be able to add custom tags to files to carry information such as a description or release status.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/add-tags-or-other-properties-to-a-file

I've not personally tried it, though it may work for your needs.

www.nxjournaling.com

 

[JohnRBaker]

You can use this to spot us old timers who's been around since proprietary operating systems, like AOS and VMS, or even UNIX, as we tend to avoid using spaces in file names even though it's no longer an issue for most applications.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[Kenevil]

Cowski,

To answer your questions... I am very familiar with regular expressions. My current assignment is to model up an entire vehicle so there will be a large number of files. So far, I've only have around 100 files that do file the naming convention "K12345 12.12 1234-A Description" which is Project, System, Unique Number-Rev, Description. To make things worse, I then export an IGES midsurface and tack on a material thickness to the end of the name. I started researching having the thickness expression or attribute be populated in the IGES header. I had already read that first thread and will read those others soon.

We often get very small projects and rarely require a BOM. For those projects, identifying the part by description is necessary. On larger projects that have a BOM, I could see using a part number only system and referencing a BOM to cross reference a number to description. The problem is we would then have two sets of rules.

I'm researching Journaling to see how to view attributes VIA windows. I suspect this is the best solution for my situation but there's a long learning curve ahead of me.